


Dakara and Everything After

by Aelfgyfu



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1653998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aelfgyfu/pseuds/Aelfgyfu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and her brother talk about their father and their choices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dakara and Everything After

**Author's Note:**

> For SG-Fignewton's "Defining Sam from A to Z: Happy Birthday, Abyssis!" alphabet soup [here](http://sg-fignewton.livejournal.com/51192.html).

Sam settled on the sofa to watch her niece and nephew playing Frisbee the day after the funeral.

"Kids are resilient," her brother said from the doorway, a little defensively. "Of course, it's not as if they knew their grandfather _that_ well...." 

Mark trailed off at Sam's warning look and shrugged. "I suppose I should just be glad he ever came back at all." Mark didn't even know their father had nearly died of cancer years earlier, they'd been so estranged by then. 

" _I'm_ glad," Sam said, not sure she wanted to admit that if her father hadn't reconciled with Mark, she wouldn't be here now.

Mark seemed to know anyway. "Thanks for staying with us. It means a lot to the kids. They love their cool auntie."

Sam laughed. "Cool! Did you ever think I'd be cool?"

"After you started flying jets? Oh, yeah. Knew you'd be the crazy aunt who rides up on her motorcycle, who makes the parents look boring-- and mean, for not letting them ride the motorcycle."

Leaning against the door frame, Mark crossed his arms. "You're great with the kids, you know."

"Thanks!" Sam said with forced cheer, knowing where this was going. "But it's a lot easier to just swoop in and then zoom back out before they get tired of me."

Mark nodded. "You don't...do you ever...."

Sam turned to look at him steadily while she took another sip of coffee.

Mark sputtered some more before reaching the point: "Don't you feel your biological clock ticking?"

The question wasn't a surprise, but the wording was ludicrous. She laughed so hard she nearly sloshed coffee out of her mug. "Don't you feel that's a little clichéd?"

His arms came apart into a shrug before he sank his hands into his pockets. "I really thought you and Pete...."

"And I thought so too," Sam said, yet again. "But it just...I'm sorry, Mark. He was a great guy, and...but I couldn't give him what he wanted."

"So you selflessly--" He cut himself off with a sudden shake of the head. "Sorry. I--"

"He couldn't give me what I wanted. Or needed. Not his fault. Maybe mine," Sam shrugged. "But...it turns out I don't really want a nice big house." With a sunny kitchen, she thought with only the smallest twinge, looking to the bit of open kitchen that she could see beyond Mark's dining room.

"Before Dad died, he asked me if I had what I wanted. And I said yes." She hesitated, but her brother was hurting too. He tried to hide his resentment, but he didn't understand why she had been with Dad when he hadn't even known Dad was sick. So she told the truth. "I said it so that he'd feel better, so that...so that disappointment wasn't the last thing I ever gave him."

Mark remained still, listening.

"But then I realized it's true. I love my job! I love my team! And you wouldn't believe...." she smiled and shook her head. She did hope she could tell him some day. She wanted her nieces to know and be proud. 

She also wanted to see the look on Mark's face when he learned what "deep space radar telemetry" had really covered. That wasn't nice of her, but she didn't care. 

Mark nodded again slowly. "You always did see something in science that I don't get. I wouldn't think studying the stars would be exciting."

"But it is." Her grin was genuine, and enough to spark a small one in him.

"No regrets, then?" he asked.

Sam thought of the extra years they'd been lucky enough to get with her father. Even with all the friends she'd lost, even with Daniel dying yet _again_ , she had him back, and Teal'c, and the General. She'd seen Earth from a Glider and come home on the shuttle. She'd flown alien spacecraft. She'd been to other galaxies. She'd blown up a sun. She'd traveled in time. She'd met forms of life most people never even imagined. She'd saved the Earth several times--keeping Mark, his wife, and her nieces alive, even if they never knew it. And that, as Jack O'Neill would say, never got old.

"A few," she said honestly. "There's some things I wish I could have done differently." Kept Janet alive--and Dad. "But on the whole? No. I wouldn't trade what I have for anything."


End file.
